Louisiana Man Arrested After Pawning Guns He Was Prohibited From Having

A Louisiana man is now heading to prison after he pawned some firearms. Now, it doesn’t appear that he stole the guns or anything like that. So just how does a man get arrested for pawning guns he owns?

Joseph Seth Rivers, 35, of Converse, also could be fined $250,000 and ordered to serve three years of federal supervised release once he is released from prison, the U.S. attorney’s office reports.

Rivers is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 24 in U.S. District Court in Shreveport.

He pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Back in 2009, Rivers was convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm. That’s a felony and proof that he is probably the kind of guy most folks would rather have not be able to pick up a firearm in any legal way.

However, in August of 2016, he pawned four guns. A .270-caliber Remington Model 700 rifle, a .357-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 66 revolver, a .22LR Ruger Model 10-22 rifle and a 16-gauge Browning Model BPS shotgun. At the time, he had to present his driver’s license as well.

Unfortunately for him, his history as a convicted felon was learned, and now he’s facing prison time.

I can’t say that I’m sorry to see it, either.

There’s no mention of how he obtained the guns, but there are some possibilities including face-to-face transfers. If the seller had no reason to believe Rivers was a felon, there’s no reason they wouldn’t have sold him the guns. It’s also possible that he bought them from people who knew his status and didn’t care, which would happen even with a universal background check system in place. Hell, he may have inherited them, which is virtually impossible for police to check.

What matters here is that Rivers was caught, prosecuted, and will be sentenced.

Far too often, those who try to break firearm laws are never prosecuted. They’re simply allowed to continue trying and refining their processes until they’re able to get guns illegally.

Of course, Rivers was able to as well, which is a problem and I’m sure police have already looked into it. We don’t know the nature of how he got them, and it doesn’t matter in the long run. Not for this story, at least.

I’m sure the police down there in Louisiana are thankful for people like Rivers, though. I mean, he knew he was prohibited from having firearms, yet he had them. Then he tried to pawn them when he had to know that he’d have to show ID. Did he think no one would ever look and see if he was even allowed to have the guns in the first place? That’s just a special kind of stupid, a kind that most police officers tend to be happy to see.

It makes their jobs so much easier, after all.

We’ll have to see what kind of sentence Rivers will get, but hopefully, it’ll be long enough that he can consider his history of poor life choices.